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TheBlacKat333
Apr '24

So I’ve noticed that stories that include some sort of lgbt character in a side role, either write them just as well as the rest of the characters, or with the same depth as a puddle, but somehow less interesting than one. I’m not specifically talking about like, bls or gls, but I do want to know what your average writer (at least your average writer in this forum lol) thinks. And you don’t need to have put queer characters in your stories, im just asking for opinions off the top of folks’s heads.

I joke to my friends that all my characters that end up being lgbt in some way fall into these 4 categories, and I can’t really disagree at this point lmao

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    Apr '24

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    Apr '24
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NickRowler
Apr '24

I write a lot of queer men in my stories because I just enjoy writing them. I don't think I would call my characters "average joes", because themes of people dealing with mental health and disabilities also pop up in my work.

I think something that writers sort of struggle with is that most people have intersectional identities, people IRL are not just one thing. And people who are from a similar background may still have wildly different tastes and opinions.

I guess I can mostly speak as someone who is bisexual and a transman. I think most people are not good at writing transmasculine characters. I think some people outside of the community are worried they might write some problematic, which leads to a lot of them coming off as bland softboys.

MK_Wizard
Apr '24

I think it's important to write them as normal relatable people who just are what they are. Showcase their quirks, their life goals, their hobbies, their flaws, their journeys, their mistakes, their struggles and such. You don't even have to go into their love life. You can keep that private. Just make them entertaining.

If you can't tell, I don't like poster children lol. I like characters. The way they swing is no different than informing me what colour their eyes are. Frankly, it is boring and one note to make everything about the queer character their queer trait. I try to practice what I preach with my own queer characters.

TheBlacKat333
Apr '24

I call that the heartstopper effect, nothing against heartstopper, but I feel like it has something to do with it

TheBlacKat333
Apr '24
MK_Wizard

I see what you mean, but I raise you a “put every single queercoded villain stereotype that’s not straight up rancid and put it a melting pot”, it’s the most fun I can have while making up a character.

moontokkym
Apr '24

I try and write my characters as people, and I know a lot of queer people so a lot of them are queer. The emotional core of my story is battling with finding identity and stable loving relationships in an unstable world which is a common queer experience too.

I'd like to think that because I'm around so many real life examples of queer people (myself included) I'm a bit less likely to write based on stereotypes, but I've also existed in the same society as everyone else so some of it's going to have seeped through no matter what I do. In all cases, I'm writing humanity, labels come later.

NickRowler
Apr '24
TheBlacKat333

This issue existed long before Heartstopper became a huge hit.

I think it’s more of people getting their content filtered through social media. Softboys do exist but they don’t represent all trans and queer men.

BoomerZ
Apr '24
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voskhodart
Apr '24

I’m a trans artist, and my entire main trio is LGBT. (Reason is a bisexual trans man, Charlotte is a questioning trans woman, & Oburan is bisexual.) Their identities are very important to me, but they’re also people first. (Reason is a priest/physician, Charlotte is an exiled mercenary, & Oburan is a retired necromancer.) Unless you’re writing a story about LGBT struggles that you have personal experience with or extensive research towards, your characters shouldn’t be defined exclusively by their gender or sexuality.

I also think the thing that irks me the most is that people only know how to write one type of characters for every LGBT identity. The soft flamboyant gay man, the outgoing bisexual, the super pretty femme lesbian, the indistinguishable-from-cis-people trans character… Yes, people like this exist, but LGBT people come in a lot more flavors. (Though, I’ll admit, it is actually pretty challenging to show the rep that I really want. Reason is a no-op trans man, so I struggle to get around censorship rules surrounding his chest. I have a lot of opinions on that, lmao.)

And I often feel like creators just… don’t know any LGBT people? They write us like fragile fantasy creatures that have to carry our horrible secret, instead of regular people who happen to have a more complicated relationship with gender and sexuality than them. In the end, the easiest way to write a good gay character is to write a character… and then make them gay. If you don’t have firsthand experience with LGBT struggles and stories, don’t worry about giving your character a traumatic backstory related to their gender/sexuality. Sometimes a guy is a super jacked soldier in the coolest armor ever made, and he also happens to kiss his husband goodnight.

skidiggy
Apr '24

When writing, I try and craft each character as an individual person with a rich inner life, feelings, and experiences. Their histories, preferences, personalities, and ambitions are part of their makeup, and I try and avoid cardboard placeholders as much as possible. Sure, one character may have holdups with how their family processes their lifestyle and choices, but others in the same story don't have the same experiences.

Love comes in all shapes, patterns, and sizes, which not only makes a story a little more interesting, but all the more real. :blush:

TheBlacKat333
Apr '24

I don’t really write any “my family doenst accept me” stuff, cause god knows how much of that I’ve got in real life, and also, I live in Portugal. If I really wanted to write homophobia, I’m pretty sure people here are inventing new flavors of it.

SumireHime
Apr '24
NickRowler

Ugh as a trans guy myself who happens to be femme, I was worried I'd offend other trans guys by writing a character like myself. I had no idea that a "bland softboy" was a stereotype? I haven't actually read any other trans guy characters, tbh. They seem kind of rare.

Rai_Muffin
Apr '24

My queer characters were written first, then became gay afterwards.
It came about because I felt that a romance with another character would benefit their personal story and that character just so happened to be the same gender as them.
For example, one couple started as friends who were raised as slaves together but I felt that making them romantic helped their arcs.

TheBlacKat333
Apr '24

Yep. I feel like that’s most of the problem. Or they happened to know this one lgbt person, and thought that they could just apply said persons experience to everyone. I don’t blame that second case too much, cause they at least get points for trying

voskhodart
Apr '24

Real. I feel like it just goes back to the very basic rule of "if you're going to write about a group of people, you should probably talk to that group of people". Not just for LGBT characters, but also for disabilities and cultures that you aren't familiar with. Even beyond interacting with people in the real world, the internet is a big place with a lot of people who would love to share their experiences!

ThunderChicken
Apr '24

As a gay man I wrote the queer characters of Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days as they are/were in real life. The whole story is about me struggling with my sexuality, and toward the end, when everything is finally coming together and I have lots of gay friends, they are written true to their personalities.

With Finding Daecon’s Way, which is a shapeshifter fantasy, all if the characters are male and they all would be considered queer by humans. Technically they’re hermaphrodites, and they reproduce sexually. I tried to write them as normal people that happen to be all dudes. That can fly. And change into lions and bears and such. So maybe not so normal, but their queerness is not their main character traits.

One thing I’ve noticed in a lot of LGBTQ media is that things are simply too easy for the characters. As much as I’d love to live in a world where two young guys could openly be lovers in high school and nobody bats an eye aside from some snide comments here and there, and as much as I’ll admit that things are a lot better now than they were in the late 1980’s when I was in high school, they’re still not quite “there” yet. As good as things have gotten, there are still very real dangers to expressing one’s queerness in public, yet these dangers are often omitted from stories. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do like reading about happy queer characters, but there is always that “as if!” factor lurking in the back of my mind.

WNHCD is very much about living with those dangers, and FDW actually opens with the MC being assaulted and almost murdered because he let his sexuality show in a redneck bar.

TheBlacKat333
Apr '24

Yikes. I live in Portugal, aka the country where you’re more likely to learn at least 5 gay slurs before you learn long division, so I relato to having that brain worm telling me that it’s simply “unrealistic” that queer characters could exist in complete peace. Even in an explicitly made up fantasy world where most social issues are said to not exist.
The workaround I made to write lgbt characters in relative peace other than whatever is happening in the plot, is to give them all batshit amounts of guns. It works for me.